Stella Awards

[Barnacle Bill]

It's time again for the annual "Stella Awards"! For those unfamiliar with
these awards, they are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled
hot coffee on herself and successfully sued the McDonald's in New Mexico
where she purchased the coffee. You remember, she took the lid off the
coffee and put it between her knees while she was driving. Who would ever
think one could get burned doing that, right?

That's right; these are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts
in the U.S. You know, the kinds of cases that make you scratch your head. So
keep your head scratcher handy.

Here are the Stella's for the past year:

7TH PLACE:
Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her
peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running
inside a furniture store. The store owners were understandably surprised by
the verdict, considering the running toddler was her own son.

6TH PLACE:
Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles, California won $74,000 plus medical
expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman
apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he
was tryin g to steal his neighbor's hubcaps.

Go ahead, grab your head scratcher.

5TH PLACE:
Terrence Dickson, of Bristol, Pennsylvania, who was leaving a house he had
just burglarized by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the
automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the garage
door to open. Worse, he couldn't re-enter the house because the door
connecting the garage to the house locked when Dickson pulled it shut.
Forced to sit for eight, count 'em, EIGHT, days on a case of Pepsi and a
large bag of dry dog food, he sued the homeowner's''s''s insurance company
claiming undue mental anguish.

Amazingly, the jury said the insurance company must pay Dickson $500,000 for
his anguish.
We should all have this kind of anguish.

Keep scratching. There are more...

4TH PLACE:
Jerry Williams, of Little Rock , Arkansas , garnered
4th Place in the Stella's when he was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses
after being bitten on the butt by his next door neighbor's beagle - even
though the Beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. Williams did
not get as much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might
have been provoked at the time of the butt bite because Williams had climbed
over the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun.

Grrrrr ... Scratch, scratch.

3RD PLACE:
Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania because a jury ordered a
Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on a spilled
soft drink and broke her tailbone. The reason the soft drink was on the
floor: Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during
an argument.
What ever happened to people being responsible for their own actions?

Scratch, scratch, scratch. Hang in there; there are only two more Stella's
to go...

2ND PLACE:
Kara Walton, of Claymont, Delaware sued the owner of a night club in a near
by city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor, knocking out
her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the
ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge, the jury said the
night club had to pay her $12,000....oh, yeah, plus dental expenses. Go
figure.

1ST PLACE: (May I have a fanfare played on 50 kazoos please)

This year's runaway First Place Stella Award winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinsk I
of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who purchased a new 32-foot Winnebago motor
home. On her first trip home, from an OU football game, having driven on to
the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver
s seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich. Not
surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Also
not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner
s manual that she couldn't actually leave the driver's seat while the cruise
control was set. The Oklahoma jury awarded her, are you sitting down, $1,750,000 PLUS a new motor home.
Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just incase Mrs. Grazinski
has any relatives who might also buy a motor home.

Are we, as a society, getting more stupid...?

[FishnLine]

It is amazing what people can get awarded with. I would probably just go to jail for most of this stuff.

[grubby]

These are some real winners and to believe we have to share the same earth with the ones who awarded them thier settlements.

[hnd]

most of these lawsuits have never happened...

[blairarnold]

If you check snopes.com, none of them ever happened except on the lady who spilled the coffee, Ms. Stella. What no one ever mentions about that was that she was in her 80's and suffered extensive 3rd degree burns which were very difficult to heal because of her age and the seriousness of the burns. It turned out that McDonald's had done a study that showed that they sold more coffee if they super heated it as it spread the aroma around more in their restaurants. Consequently their coffee was way hotter than anyone else's. They knew that it was heated high enough to cause 3rd degree burns and had had several reported to them, but they made a marketing decision that the increase coffee sales would more than compensate them for any liability costs - in short that the money coming in on sales would be more than the money paid out for injuries they caused people. As Paul Harvey says that is the rest of the story.

[father of 4]

I have also heard of these lawsuits before and have also seen where they are not true by going to snopes. It is funny though and im sure there are some real dusies out there.